In May of 2021, following the multi-day barrage of 4,300 Palestinian rockets toward Israeli civilians, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 24-9 in favor of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” to investigate the Jewish State’s treatment of Palestinians.
At the time, Israel strongly condemned the creation of the biased anti-Israel commission, calling it a “moral stain on the international community and the UN.”
This week, the UN Commission of Inquiry released a report worthy of its “moral stain” labeling.
The 18-page report, made public on Tuesday, pointed the finger at Israel for Palestinian terrorism, alleging that their “persistent discrimination” and “belligerent occupation” are to blame for the violence.
The report asserted that the Jewish State is occupying territory that belongs to the (non-existent) “State of Palestine,” including the Gaza strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem.
It is only by ending “Israel’s occupation” that the “persistent cycle of violence” will be stopped, and “the world can begin to reverse historical injustices and move towards self-determination of the Palestinian peoples,” the Commissioner, Miloon Kothari, insisted in a statement.
“The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other,” Navanethem Pillay, who led the UN probe, accused.
Biased & One-Sided Witch Hunt
For obvious reasons, Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation and referred to the new report as a “biased and one-sided report tainted with hatred for the State of Israel.”
Anne Herzberg, a UN representative and Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor, noted that the report made little mention of Palestinian Terror Organizations, such as Hamas, devoting only a few paragraphs to criticizing the groups.
“Similarly, the report attacks foundational policies of Israel,” she explained, “making multiple false claims regarding discrimination in order to build a case of racism and so that this permanent [commission of inquiry] can later accuse Israel of apartheid.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry further stated that the report was “nothing more than a waste of money and effort of the United Nations’ systems, part and parcel of the witch hunt being carried out by the Human Rights Council against Israel.”
The United Nations take every opportunity to unrighteously condemn the Jewish State of Israel. Despite Israel having one of the world’s best records on human rights, in 2020, the UN General Assembly condemned Israel a total of 17 times, as opposed to the six times for all other countries combined.
United States: Contrast of Administrations
The US State Department remarked that the probe is “a one-sided, biased approach that does nothing to advance the prospects for peace.”
Those words, however, run hollow considering the Biden Administration’s own denial of historic truth, labeling Israel as an occupier of “West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights” on multiple occasions.
In sharp contrast, the United States, under the Trump administration, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and declared that the US does not see Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria as illegal under international law.
The ‘Antisemitic Canard Of The Present Generation’
During a visit to Israel last October, Mike Pompeo, former Sec. of State during the Trump Administration, decried the anti-semitic claim that Israel is an “occupier” and insisted that the future of nations “demands a more forceful assertion of the truth.”
That assertion to truth, he urged, demands that we confront the “false narrative that is the very beating heart of modern antisemitism.”
“That beating heart is the lie. It is the lie that the State of Israel is an illegal occupier in the land of Israel. The lie of occupation provides Israel’s enemies a means to explain away all types of aggression and violence as merely resistance to the occupation,” he underscored. “It is clear then that promoting the common misrepresentation of the Jewish state of Israel as an occupier in the land of Israel has become the primary antisemitic canard of the present generation.”
“The bottom line is that occupation is a legal term, whose definition does not apply to the State of Israel under the law,” Pompeo underscored. “Nevertheless, the term is intentionally misused. And it’s important that we know this. It is intentional misuse in order to shape negative misperceptions of Israel’s history and its legitimacy while perpetuating a sense of Arab victimhood.”
“In this very same context, ‘occupiers’ is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief,” he continued. “That goes hand in hand with the denial and ratio of Jewish history through international institutions such as the United Nations.”
“To Christians, of course, this means that if the two Jewish temples never stood on the mountain Jerusalem, then Christ in His works are then equally invalidated,” he noted.
Biblical and Historical Truth
As mentioned by Pompeo in his speech, the false accusation that Israel is an occupier with no rights to their land flies in the face of both Biblical and historical truth.
Israel’s history in the land, which was given to the Jews by God, has been documented extensively in the Bible, dating back thousands of years.
Furthermore, Scripture also promised (in Ezekiel 36-37, Matthew 24:32-34, Jeremiah 30:3, and elsewhere) that God would miraculously regather the nation of Israel back into their land. After 2,000 years, that re-establishment occurred in a single day on May 14th, 1948, under the precise circumstances outlined in the Bible (Isaiah 66:7-9).
To reject Israel’s rights to the land is to deny God’s authority and the accuracy of Scripture.
Hal Lindsey in his article “To Whom Does the Land of Israel Belong?” explained that the UN’s own charters uphold Israel rights:
Over the years, a series of international treaties have confirmed the historical right of the Jews as the indigenous people of the land, including Judea and Samaria (known in the media as “the West Bank”).
Michel Calvo is a lawyer specializing in international law. For the Gatestone Institute, he wrote, “After the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), British Mandate for Palestine (1922), San Remo Resolution (1920), and Treaty of Sevres (1920) created international law, and recognized and re-established the historical indigenous rights of the Jews to their land.”
In 1922, the League of Nations recognized and affirmed “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” The UN Charter specifically forbids the United Nations from undoing international law and agreements written prior to the formation of the UN. Article 80 says, “Nothing in this Charter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.”
Not everyone accepts the authority of the Bible. But those people can simply look to international law and see the rights of the Jews to the Holy Land.
For those who believe the Bible, this issue shouldn’t even be a question. God gave title deed to the Holy Land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He reaffirmed it again and again. In this case, there’s no conflict between international law and God’s law.
Former Congress member Michele Bachman, in a recent interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, stressed that God will hold nations accountable for their treatment of Israel.
“There is a direct link, as the Bible says, between nations that bless Israel and nations that don’t. In fact, the Bible is very clear in Joel 3:2 that there is only one criteria upon which nations will be judged, and that is how nations treat Zion, Israel,” she explained. “If nations seek to divide the land or scatter the Jewish people from their land or treat Jewish life cheaply, nations will be held accountable for that by the Lord. And this is God’s law.”
